


None Of This Is Real

by talkingtothesky



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Dialogue, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s05e04 6741, Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, Missing Scene, Root/Shaw mentioned, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 08:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9811004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: While Root hurried through the streets to get to Shaw, Harold went looking for a dead man. (5x04 spoilers)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [potc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potc/gifts).



> This is one of the many fics I have needed to write ever since Season 5 aired, but am only now finding the courage. I know they couldn't show Harold's reaction to John's death without revealing the location of the subway, but I wanted this anyway.
> 
> Prompt: The way you said "I love you" - Over and over again, till it's nothing but a senseless babble.

A shot rang out over the speakers. "John, Sameen, are you alright? What's going on?"

 

Harold stopped typing. The Machine's warning messages were flooding the screens. Red, and black, and yellow. Probabilities, percentages.

 

Harold and Root looked at each fearfully in the ensuing silence. Then Sameen's breathless, stilted voice: "I don't know what happened. Samaritan ops, they came out of nowhere. They got him. John's dead."

 

Four years, Harold had been waiting to receive that news. Now it was here, and he could not comprehend it. "No. This can't happen." He got up from the desk, walked out of the subway car, and stared at nothing.

 

Dimly, he registered Root pleading. "Shaw, you have to get out of there."

 

She was going to leave him alone, he knew it. What other choice did she have? Root had to go rescue Shaw. That was what she did. Root's purpose.

 

She came out of the car and grasped his upper arms. "I'm so sorry. Save Her. I'll be back." Harold couldn't look at her. She vanished up the steps and Harold continued to stand there in a daze, the panic of inaction making breathing difficult. Any moment now, Samaritan could be swarming the station.

 

With an effort, he turned back to the Machine. The screens had gone dark.

 

A persuasive voice in his head. _Let them find it. What can I do? We're finished._

 

While Root hurried through the streets to get to Shaw, Harold went looking for a dead man.

 

He tracked his earpiece. He found him lying in the alley.

 

There was so much blood.

 

Red, and black, and white.

 

Harold fell to his knees. "John."

 

He almost cried out in shock when John spoke to him. "It was Shaw."

 

There - a movement of his lungs. A flutter of the blood-stained white shirt. John was breathing. It ought to be impossible.

 

Then the facts of what John said caught up to him. "Sameen?"

 

John nodded. "She shot me. Warned Greer. Can't trust her. Root. She'll be next."

 

Harold fumbled for his phone. "I'm calling you an ambulance."

 

John loosely caught his wrist with a bloody hand. "No, call Root."

 

He couldn't call anyone. The phone was dead. "John, where's your phone?" He frantically patted John's pockets, came up empty. He had to be lying on top of it. With an apologetic grimace for the pain he was about to cause, he put his arm around John's shoulders and lifted him up. John let out an agonized groan and clung to him.

 

"Finch. Do you love me?" There was blood on his lips.

 

There was only one answer to that. "Yes, John, I love you. I always have, and I always will." Harold said, tearfully.

 

John smiled, bright and blissful. He sighed and brought with it a fresh trickle of blood down his chin. Then he went limp in Harold's arms.

 

"No! John, please don't go!" Harold desperately felt for a pulse, found none.

 

He recognised, distantly, what John had just done. Like the exemplary soldier he was, he'd held on until he could relay vital information. That duty complete, he'd only needed a kind word from Harold to send him on his way.

 

Harold's eyes blurred with tears. He buried his face in John's hair. "I love you," he said again, in a strangled whisper. He was kneeling in John's blood. He no longer had the strength to keep himself up. He slumped to the floor, back against the alley wall, still cradling John's body.

 

Something had broken in Harold's mind, and heart.

 

"I love you. I know everything about you. You can't leave me this way."

 

"John, I love you, I really do. I promise...I'd promise you anything. Just please come back."

 

Harold rocked him, and wept, begged, told him he loved him over and over again, until there was nothing but a string of unintelligible, hysterical sounds.

 

Three and a half miles away, Root too was holding the bloody remains of her sweetheart.

 

And with that, the world dissolved.


End file.
